this post was submitted on 09 May 2024
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(page 2) 41 comments
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[–] [email protected] 25 points 7 months ago
[–] [email protected] 116 points 7 months ago (4 children)

That article was worthless.... basically streaming is expensive and not as awesome as it once was. There you go whole article

[–] [email protected] 19 points 7 months ago (2 children)

It's still way more awesome than cable ever was. Sure you can have all the services all at once and pay as much as a cable bill, or you can rotate your subscriptions and pay way less.

[–] [email protected] 28 points 7 months ago (2 children)

I’m not sure about that. Popular shows get canceled, unfinished. Huge price hikes, and you can’t jump to another provider to watch the shows at a new rate or call and threaten to cancel to get a new rate. Sure, there are a few good series, but it’s still mostly crap. Sure, you can watch some older movies on demand, but plenty aren’t available, are available on some other service, and/or require you to pay a rental fee if you can find it. Prices keep climbing, ads are constantly a threat, and they place more restrictions on how many devices you’re allowed to watch on.

They are doing everything they can to re-insert the worst aspects of cable.

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 7 months ago

My hot take, in the digital age, all direct marketing should be opt-in with the platform. Opt-in for industries with the ability to ban specific advertisers.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 7 months ago (1 children)

I went from cable to satellite in 2008 and then went strictly streaming in 2010. I've had Disney + and Netflix off and on over the years but I've found that I don't need any of them. There are plenty of things to watch for free elsewhere and plenty of other things to do than watch shows that will be canceled after the first season.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 7 months ago

I won't watch a show unless it's done. This bullshit of cancelling after one season is ass.

[–] [email protected] 35 points 7 months ago (3 children)

The music industry figured it out. Now the video streaming industry needs to. Until then, arrrrrr.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 7 months ago (2 children)

The music industry figured it out: I listen to way more music than ever before and I willingly pay more than ever before

Video streaming keeps trying to make my experience more frustrating, less value to me. They’re scrounging for dollars is driving me away. I’ve considered my options for making video entertainment enjoyable again, and I’m just tired of the whole thing. I’m spending more time in projects, more time online, more time reading ebooks from my library. I’m watching less video than before, enjoying it less, getting less value for my money and it’s just all not worth it. Their efforts to profit more from my attention are getting them less of it and losing my willingness to pay

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 7 months ago

Yo ho ho my friend. Yo ho ho.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 7 months ago (2 children)

What is that Hulu you are talking about, we never got that in Mexico (nor Pandora now that I am talking about it).

In this day and age where everyone wants its piece of the cake it is weird to me that they never cared about more countries xd.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

It may have been more difficult and expensive than you’d expect. My understanding was distribution contracts tend to be per country. Netflix can’t just stream all the stuff from north of the border, but have to start over with buying rights to everything in a new country

This made more sense when distributors were all per country but not so much for streamers

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago

Another streaming service that started around the same time as Netflix's. More focused on TV shows and now owned by Disney.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Hulu is owned by cable companies, they didn’t learn everyone hates advertising

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[–] [email protected] -1 points 7 months ago (4 children)

If you don't watch it it looks like nothing.

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[–] [email protected] -5 points 7 months ago (1 children)

MUuuhhaaaaa. I worked for a cable company for a little over a decade. I remember commenting when people everywhere were talking about its death that streaming would soon be just like cable. They called me a fool. MUuuhhaaaaa!

[–] [email protected] 0 points 7 months ago

This is what you made me think of

1000002368

[–] [email protected] 7 points 7 months ago

I have a reminder to cancel Amazon Prime in a month. I never really used the TV portion until a few months ago and was like, fine ... the selection sucks but it's alright. After they introduced the ads now, it's unusable to me. I'm getting rid of it entirely and not rewarding this type of behaviour.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 7 months ago

It’ll be cable when they start making you contact customer retention in order to cancel.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 7 months ago

What is this "world of content" the author is talking about? 17 years ago, the streaming options on Netflix were the previous season of Friday Night Lights, and... that was it. A few years later they got The Office, but never the current season. So you were always behind. These articles never seem to include a graph of available content over time.

[–] [email protected] 46 points 7 months ago (4 children)

Yes, but no. Cable didn't used to let you watch all seasons of a specific show on any given day and time of your choosing.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 7 months ago

Until the show you want to watch gets removed because they don't want to pay the licensing fee for it anymore.

The original content is often very mid.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Pretty much.

If you missed an episode of a show on cable television. Well, you're shit out of luck unless it's a show that the network didn't mind running re-runs of, but re-runs only applied for shows that were popular. And if you missed an episode of a show that wasn't popular, again you were shit out of luck and hope to one day acquire it through a VHS or a DVD or these days, blu-ray or on streaming.

Network programming was always like this.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 7 months ago

That is also the reason everything reset to the status quo at the end of every episode.

[–] [email protected] 34 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (2 children)

I'm old enough to remember when cable didn't have ads. I was really young, maybe 5ish, but even then it was confusing to me when they started adding commercials. That was for bad TV with the antenna. Then it was only HBO that didn't have ads, but we couldn't afford that until I was much older.

EDIT: I guess my memories of being 5 years old aren't very accurate.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago (1 children)

If you got it over antenna, it most definitely was not cable.

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[–] [email protected] 22 points 7 months ago (2 children)

Basic cable has always had commercials along with the over the air channels. Premium channels didn’t.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago

You're right. I guess I was remembering premium channels and some niche channels that were cable-only. Most channels available on early cable were just piping non-local broadcast channels down a cable.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Yep, cable was first used to allow people to watch the same channels that were available over the air just from a more locations than what was available via antenna at their home (and with better reception), so it had the same commercials.

Premium channels were commercial-less for 7 or 9 years (can't remember exactly) before the first premium channel decided to start running adverts.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago

There also used to be product placement ads during the shows too. I feel like that’s also more insidious when Jed Clampett and Granny are telling you every episode to smoke a Winston and eat Kellogg’s.

[–] [email protected] 131 points 7 months ago (1 children)

When the ideas run dry for infinite growth, everything old is new again.

[–] [email protected] 42 points 7 months ago (3 children)

You're correct.

Social Media is the perfect example of this. Everytime a new social media network arrives, they always boast about being able to do things you could already have done with the other 9 social media networks. Sharing pictures and video, chatting .etc. They're all things we could've already have done far way back in the days of messaging software like AIM. It's nothing new, it's just recycled ideas being treated as new.

The only things that have ever improved were the amount of size of videos and pictures we can share and the speed in which we're able to do it with. That's it.

The well of finding new ideas has ran dry, because they've all been tried and done before many times. New name, same old shit.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 7 months ago

But Tom was my friend whereas Zuck is an alien.

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 7 months ago

The convenience you required is now mandatory.

[–] [email protected] 33 points 7 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 12 points 7 months ago
[–] [email protected] 17 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

Um, duh?

Is the author just noticing this? We've been piecing this together for the past 7 some odd years. The day hit us was when YouTube decided to be cute by adding in it's own network via YouTubeTV and with it's onslaught of ads.

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